Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir) (22 page)

Luckily, the gym was nearly empty.

Well, it wasn’t luck, really. I just went at half past nine in the evening on a Tuesday, when I knew the place would be deserted.

Things went well for a while.

I used the treadmill again and managed a good ten minutes of light jogging before the black dots appeared in front of my eyes. I did a spot of rowing, which made me feel very manly and a bit like Sir Steve Redgrave.

I ran into trouble - of the psychological kind, rather the physical - when I came to use the nautilus machine.

This, for those of you that don’t know, is a contraption of pure evil.

It’s a multi-use piece of high resistance weight lifting equipment that looks like a medieval torture device. The type of thing that’d give Torquemada a hard-on.

Undeterred, I sallied forth into my nautilus experience with cheer in my heart and passion in my soul.

I got into the thing easily and it only took a second to figure out how to use it: Insert arms here, place legs here, thrust and repeat.

I elected for the full nautilus work out and started to do leg presses, as well as butterfly crunches with my arms.

I was sweating. I was pumping. I was achieving the buns of steel I’d been promised.

There was a bank of large mirrors on the wall opposite me.

The kind I’m sure are just ever so slightly warped to make you think you’re wider than you really are.

Everything was hunky dory until I caught sight of myself in that mirror.

There I was, arms and legs akimbo like a puppy dog on its back, waiting for a tickle. My hair was stood up in sweaty spikes and the baggy muscle shirt I wore did nothing to accent my physique in the slightest. I was also red-faced and grimacing.

My exercise hobby came to an end at that moment.

Yes, I may have been working the
glutes
and toning the
abs
.

Yes, I may have been burning calories and losing fat.

But none of that mattered.

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw with horror that while I was in fitness heaven, I also looked like
a complete prick
.

I glanced at the small group of people also using the gym and they looked like pricks too. A collection of sweating, heaving hamsters, caught in the machinery of ridiculous exercise bikes, rowers and stair-masters.

Here we all were, otherwise sane and rational people, spending our valuable free time in monotonous and repetitive activity, trying to achieve a physical image created by advertising executives in order to sell us after-shave and perfume.

‘Oh my God! What the hell am I doing!?’

An epiphany like this cannot be ignored.

I got off the accursed nautilus machine, stormed out of the gym and changed into my street clothes, mumbling various comments about the stupidity of the world under my breath.

I left the gym for the final time and went home.

When I got there I stuck a movie on and ordered a kebab.

It was the best tasting pound of cholesterol I’ve ever had.

The practical upshot is:

While there’s benefit in taking gentle exercise and watching what you eat, spending a fortune and all your time behaving like a small, furry rodent for the sake of losing a couple of pounds is as pointless as trying to drink the Pacific with a straw.

And anyone who says different?

Fuck ‘em.

Life’s too short and so is my patience.

8.40 pm

50830 Words

I went off on a bit of a rant there.

Apologies.

I hope your feelings are similar, though.

I think the world probably needs more people who don’t obey the rules, just because it’s the done thing.

These rules were made up by very greedy people in multi-national companies, intent on separating us from our hard earned pennies.

If you’re fat, thin, short, tall, greasy, hairy, pale or any number of things they tell us we shouldn’t be, but
you’re happy with who you are
, then don’t get caught in their web!

Live free, live large and I’ll see you down the kebab shop!

Not that you’ll be very hungry right now, seeing as that poor barbecued chicken has been stripped to the bone.

I didn’t get that much, you know…

With all the cookies you’ve been eating as well, you might start showing a little bit of extra padding around the middle if you’re not careful. Having said that, I can see you’ve taken my advice to heart and aren’t going to worry about such things.

Good for you!

There’s a few digestives left if you’re up for them.

I’ve really warmed to you as my muse over the past twenty six hours.

You seem to be an intelligent, up-standing member of society that I’d be glad to vote for in any elections you might want to run in.

I’m almost jealous.

Good grief.

I’m comparing myself to someone I can’t see, can’t hear and is at least several months into the future from now.

I think the lack of sleep has made me a little nuts.

You have to stop me from doing stuff like that, you know. Endlessly comparing myself to others - real or imaginary - and worrying whether I match up or not.

If I carry on, I’ll lose all confidence and this book will dribble to an inconclusive halt.

Self confidence is a hard thing to come by when you’re as prone to neurotic thoughts as me, so deciding whether I’m better than the next person is a big mistake.

Especially if the next guy is Steve McQueen. Yes, I know he’s dead, but I’m pretty sure he’s
still
cooler than I am.

I have a friend I met during my amateur dramatic days - short-lived as they were - who had confidence you could bounce large and pointy rocks off.

He’s an actor and I suppose its necessary for that kind of profession - but it gets a bit grating after a while.

Nothing troubles him.

His name’s Max and when Max is in a room, he’s automatically the centre of attention, steam-rolling his way through conversations with a sublime indifference to what those around him are thinking.

I don’t know whether it’s a good personality trait or not.

You may end up offending people, but if you don’t care, you won’t spend hours agonising about it afterwards, so who gives a monkeys?

I admire Max and loathe him in equal measure - but he’s good for a laugh and when I’m with him I never have to worry that people are analysing me for faults, because I’m very much the background extra, while he’s the featured lead.

I’m fairly sure my penis is larger than his though, which gives me some solace.

Max is trying to get a career off the ground and I wish him every success.

He’s certainly got the attitude for the job – where a degree of self-assurance about your abilities is vital if you’re going to get over the rejections that come with endless auditioning.

Everyone wants to be a success, of course.

I’ve never met anyone that’s said to me:

‘No, no, I don’t want to be successful and popular. I’d be much happier to face failure at every turn, because I believe it makes me a better person.’

If you do know anyone like that, do them a favour and put them out of their misery.

Success is what we all strive for: with our jobs, with the opposite sex, with our hobbies, with our talent, with money.

Money
.

That’s a biggie, isn’t it?

Our culture supports the idea that having a big pile of cash means you’re a success, and can safely ignore the little people on your drive to the country club in the Aston Martin.

We’re supposed to look up to the rich and down on the poor, aren’t we?

The more glitzy and expensive stuff someone has, the more the world sees them as being the bee’s knees, the dog’s danglies,
the mutt’s nuts
.

In short: a better person.

Is there a better way of demonstrating how wonderful you are than having a sports car in the drive, a yacht in the harbour and a set of gleaming white teeth moths like to circle round at night?

It’s what we all aspire to because at some point it was decided that material wealth was the way people should be judged.

…I must have missed that meeting.

If you can’t earn the money, you can always play the lottery.

Yeah
.

There’s a real winner of an idea.

The National Lottery had the strap-line:

It Could Be You!

This should probably have been revised to reflect the reality of the situation:

It Could Be You! …but it probably won’t be, you nasty little person!

No, it probably won’t. Odds of fourteen million to one against guarantee it.

The only silver lining is the fact that you know full well that while you haven’t won, nobody you know has won either.

You’d have no problem with a friend or loved one cashing in, but somebody who really pisses you off?

That’d be
awful
.

There you are, buying your tickets every Wednesday and Saturday, winning jack-shit and Carol from Accounts - who you’ve hated since she grassed on you for claiming too much overtime last year - wins quarter of a million and fucks off to Barbados for a month.

Wouldn’t that just make you spit?

Especially if Carol was one of those idiots who say things like this when they win the lottery:

‘Oh no, I won’t quit my job! I love what I do!’

What are you,
mental
?

They’ll make the argument that there’s no point in them quitting work, as they enjoy it and its stress free.

Well, of course it’s stress free, you’ve just won the flaming lottery!!

You don’t care about your job anymore because the monthly wage you earn is now less than the interest that big, fat mountain of cash you’ve just lucked into is accruing in your Swiss bank account!

Not only does someone you hate win the lottery, they also have the gall to come back to work and rub your nose in it.

In they stride, wearing a two thousand pound leather jacket, a four hundred pound haircut and twirling the keys to the Ferrari parked out front.

They may buy everyone in the office a nice meal at the local Harvester, but it would have been much nicer if they’d just buggered off to Barbados permanently and left the rest to carry on working, watching the clock on the wall and groaning at 6.30 every Monday morning.

You can bet your bottom dollar that the people who’d carry on working after winning the lottery are
also
the ones who come into work when they’re sick, the ones who set the time on their alarm clocks five minutes earlier and the type to say you could never quit smoking.

It’s a club, you know.

They have meetings where they think of new ways to annoy the rest of us. When I find the club house, I’m going to burn the fucker to the ground.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate rich people.

Jealous of them?
yes
. Hate them?
no
.

I just don’t like rich folk who make a big deal out of being minted.

It’s not classy.

The only analogy I can draw from personal experience is if I went around showing people my sizeable chopper at every opportunity.

That wouldn’t be classy at all.

Illegal, as well.

…fun at weddings, though.

Here’s a tip:

Don’t bother being envious of people who have more money than you. You don’t know how they got it and don’t know whether the rest of their life is crap or not. Just comparing their bank balance with yours isn’t a true indicator of how you stack up against them as a human being.

The same goes for how other people look as well:

She’s got bigger boobs than you? So what? She’s probably got the IQ of an ice cube.

He’s got bigger muscles than you? To Hell with it! He probably has body odour that’d knock out an elephant.

The next time you find yourself comparing body parts or bank balances, just imagine some really nasty defect for them. That’ll equal things out a bit.

On one of my overseas trips I visited the one place on the planet where your worth as a human being is
definitely
dictated by how much money you put on display. Where plastic is fantastic and never mind about those troublesome brain cells.

Hollywood
.

More specifically we’re talking Beverly Hills, a place where the faces are stretched, the breasts are fake and the eyes are vacant. 

I was enjoying a stroll down Rodeo Drive, looking in the shop windows and trying to contain my amazement that anyone would charge several thousand dollars for a small rug with a zigzag pattern on it.

These were the days when smoking a cigarette in L.A wouldn’t immediately get you locked up in the nearest penitentiary with Bubba, the three hundred pound sex pervert. I sparked up as I strolled along, polluting this most rarefied of atmospheres.

From behind me I hear a very nasal
‘Excuse me?’

I turn to find myself confronted with a human lizard in a bright yellow Chanel outfit, with matching handbag and shoes.

Shielding my eyes from the onslaught of colour, I approached with curiosity.

‘Yes? Can I help?’ I said, in a faintly amused voice.

The woman - I think it was a woman. It may have been a gecko, I couldn’t quite tell - heard my accent and her face lit up in a frightful way that pulled her already over-stretched skin even further back on her skull.

‘Oh! You’re English!’ she exclaimed, in a high-pitched Californian twang.

Oh dear.

If you’ve British and have never been to America, but intend to go some time in the future, expect this kind of conversation at least once.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Oh, I luuurve the English!’

‘That’s nice.’

‘They’re my favourite foreign people, because they speak English and like Americans.’